by Ann Walmsley
15
A DIFFERENT KIND OF PRISONER
LIKE SALMAN RUSHDIE, the author Ayaan Hirsi Ali has lived some of her life in the shadow of death threats from Islamic fundamentalists. In November 2004, a Dutch Moroccan man killed Theo van Gogh, the filmmaker who produced her short film Submission 1. The assassin issued his threat against Hirsi Ali in a note that he attached to Van Gogh’s body after he stabbed, shot and nearly decapitated Van Gogh in broad daylight in the cycle lane in front of the Amsterdam East borough office. In her 2007 memoir, Infidel, Hirsi Ali tells her life story, from her birth into a Muslim family in Somalia—where she survived female genital mutilation and brutal beatings by her family—to her escape from an arranged marriage, leading to her asylum in the Netherlands and re-emergence as a feminist activist and parliamentarian who spoke out against Islam’s treatment of women and against her adopted country’s approach to multiculturalism. She saw Muslim women as trapped in a cage. And when the death threat forced her into hiding, she became a different kind of prisoner.
I was instantly in tune with the author’s world of ever-present threat. In the months after the mugging in London, I had been on constant alert for danger. Parking garages remained particularly frightening. I would sit in my car until a woman or couple walked by so I could tag along with them to the lift. At home, I kept our windows’ metal security grilles locked day and night. Before nightfall, I closed our curtains so that no one passing in the lane could see into the house. It was like Hirsi Ali’s description of piling furniture and suitcases against the door of a Frankfurt hotel when she was in hiding and suspected the desk clerk had recognized her. Of course, mine was largely an imaginary threat triggered by post-traumatic stress, whereas hers was much more real and infinitely more deadly. Nevertheless, I heard reports of chokehold robbers continuing to attack other women in London, so my fears were not entirely abstract.
It must have been Carol who suggested Infidel for Frank and Graham’s Beaver Creek Book Club, because the book was new to me. As the men were reading it in their prison bunkhouses up north, I too was discovering the book for the first time, propped up in bed while the warm light from my bedside lamp illuminated the pages just enough so I could see but my husband could sleep. Some of the author’s images were so disturbing I had difficulty falling asleep after turning out the light. One such image was Hirsi Ali willingly assuming an agreed-upon submission pose for beatings from her mother.
When I checked in for book club at Beaver Creek’s reception in February, I noticed several “personal protection alarms” (PPAs) hanging on hooks behind the security desk. I asked a guard whether I was required to wear one when I was walking alone across the complex in the evening. I’d never worn one before, remembering that Carol had said it would signal to the men that I felt uneasy around them. He didn’t answer my question—simply handed one over. It seemed easiest just to accept it. Much bigger than my pocket alarm in London, the five-inch-long plastic box had a button that when pushed would instantly summon the guards. I attached the alarm to my waistband where it was almost invisible under my jacket. I didn’t like the feeling. Wearing the device ironically made me more aware of potential threats.
As soon as I sat down with Graham and Frank for our pre-meeting catch-up session, I showed them that I was wearing it. I didn’t want to insult them by letting them think I was afraid of them. I wasn’t. Graham and Frank didn’t even react. “If it goes off, you’ll know,” said Graham. “The cops will be here.”
Graham was sniffling noticeably. He said he had a cold and joked that it was because Frank had made him walk outside without a shirt. He loved to tease Frank in ways that made Frank out to be the boss. Graham was physically bigger, but his jokes about Frank made me think that maybe Frank had some authority in prison that I didn’t fully understand.
Frank was walking with a limp in the wake of his knee surgery for torn cartilage. He wouldn’t be back on skates on the prison’s outdoor ice rink for a while. Before the surgery, he had managed to get in one skating session on the bumpy natural ice surface. And he was surprised at the skates’ high quality, even though the size eight boot was too narrow for his foot. Some of the other inmates organized hockey games, Frank explained. But Graham told me he avoided those. “Hockey games in prison—they play by prison rules,” said the former Hells Angels enforcer. “They’re bad. Anyway I don’t like people hitting me.”
We talked about membership changes in the book club. Although Graham had been away for Raymond’s debut appearance at the book club meeting for Outliers the previous month, he’d heard some grumbling about how Raymond had managed to get into the book club so swiftly, when there were four or five inmates on the waiting list.
“You have to keep in mind, Frankie, that there’s other people on the list that you bypassed letting him in, which caused some very hard feelings,” said Graham.
“But those guys don’t know nothing about the list,” said Frank. “It’s your list.”
“They know because they’ve come to me and said, hey listen, their buddy’s on the list and the next thing Raymond jumps the queue, as they put it to me, and all of a sudden Raymond’s sitting at the table.”
“You know why I did that? ’Cause I think the guy is going to be beneficial to the group. He’s got a lot of experiences.”
“I’m sure his input is valuable. But at the same time ...” He described how some members of the book club had complained that Raymond had dominated the meeting last month.
I told them that I didn’t think Raymond had done so. Frank agreed, saying that Raymond’s comments were helpful. “But if it comes with attitude and that,” said Frank, his tone changing sharply, “we don’t have to take his crap.” All his normal warmth fell away at that moment. It was uncharacteristic of Frank, but inviting new members is a contentious issue for all book clubs.
Despite his comment about Raymond, I noticed, as we talked about what we were reading, that Frank’s values were often gentle and moderate, particularly when Graham was pronouncing on matters of geopolitics and regional conflicts. That afternoon, because Graham had been reading more of Al Gore’s Assault on Reason, he wanted to talk about the threat of a nuclear weapon in the hands of the then-president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “I mean clearly this book is relevant to all the stuff that’s going on now in Iran,” he said. He told Frank and me that he thought Israel would be justified in striking out first, given Ahmadinejad’s controversial anti-Israeli statements.
“Let me ask you this, if you live next door to a guy, Frankie, and that guy told you that I’ve got the gun and as soon as I get the bullets on Monday morning I’m going to come over to your house and I’m going to shoot you, would you wait till he got the bullets Monday morning?”
“No.”
“I wouldn’t neither. Ahmadinejad’s got the gun. Once he gets the bullets, he’s coming.”
But Frank said these issues were “distracting from the real issues like pollution. We are damaging our environment. And that’s where the war should be.” He thought the money spent bombing other nations could be spent building better recycling plants. “Who knows how many geniuses got wiped out in Iraq,” he concluded.
It was only one segue later in the conversation that we wound up talking again about Frank’s shooting incident in the restaurant.
I asked Frank whether there had ever been a restorative justice initiative between him and the man who had been seriously injured. Traditionally, restorative justice brings victims and offenders together, after the offender has been apprehended, in the interests of helping the victim to explain how the crime affected him and helping the offender repair the harm. Frank replied that “somebody,” presumably an acquaintance of his, had reached out to the restaurant owner during those six years when he himself was on the lam. “The owner said he didn’t want no problems,” said Frank.
I was imagining how that might have played out when Graham suddenly gripped the arms of his chair and was overtaken with
explosive laughter. “I’m not sure,” he managed to say between spasms, “that was … really a … restorative justice process. I’m not sure … that qualifies.” The effort of talking while convulsing over the hilarity was causing his eyes to brim with tears and causing me to laugh too. “That might not be the technical definition: ‘Yeah, he told me he didn’t want no problems.’ Problem solved. I can’t imagine why.” By then Graham was so hysterical he was gripping his chest with his big paws. He was implying, of course, that the restaurant owner might have felt threatened by whomever had approached him on Frank’s behalf.
Graham’s helplessness in the face of his own laughing jag was infectious and watching him laugh made me laugh more, even though I was thinking about how Frank felt and ultimately how the shooting victim must have felt. Frank smiled but didn’t actually chuckle.The chaplain opened his office door to look at us. “I’m the one who went overboard,” Frank said in a subdued voice.
As we gathered for book club I could see that Raymond was back, looking natty in a Roots Canada sweatshirt and an elegant scarf. Clearly he’d liked the discussion enough last time to return. Graham opened the meeting by inviting the members to forward any book recommendations to him, so that he could submit them to my Book Selection Committee and to Carol. And, for the benefit of new members, he introduced himself as the moderator “so everyone gets to talk and nobody hogs too much time.” Frank and I made a point of avoiding each other’s eyes. Raymond was the only new member.
Phoebe opened the meeting in a very Carol-like fashion by addressing the elephant in the room. “Obviously the subject matter of Infidel is one that is very sensitive in nature,” she said. “Politics and religion are always controversial and this has both. Let’s make sure we’re respectful in our view. People are easily offended.” I had no idea if there were any Muslims in the group. She suggested that before getting to some of the more touchy issues, we could discuss each of Hirsi Ali’s family members in turn. It was an approach that Carol had recommended to Phoebe when the men were discussing novels. But this was the first time I’d seen her adapt it to a memoir.
The first character up for discussion was Hirsi Ali’s bullying brother, Mahad, who enjoyed privileges and freedoms while his two sisters, Ayaan and Haweya, did the housework under the strict eye of their mother. Characterizations followed in rapid-fire, with no need for Phoebe to prompt anyone. Mahad was the stand-in disciplinarian when the father was away, said Frank. He was the subject of Hirsi Ali’s contempt, said Raymond. A fellow who never amounted to much, said Tom and Graham. A kid who succumbed to peer pressure, said Byrne. A thief who stole their mother’s money, pointed out Doc. Except for an incident in which Mahad told his mother to stop beating Hirsi Ali, the men concluded that he was unremarkable and spoiled by his position in the household.
“The male is everything,” observed Earl, about the Somali Muslim households portrayed in the book. “As the boys grow older they don’t have to do any chores, don’t have any responsibilities other than being the man. It almost encourages you to be a bully. You’ve got this whole systematic abuse. It doesn’t matter whether it’s brothers, uncles or strangers.”
And we shouldn’t be surprised, Raymond suggested. “The question you have to ask is, what’s the incentive for a male steeped in the Islamic culture to evolve, to have an awakening, to have a realization that there’s an escape from that oppression when you’re the beneficiary of the oppression?” He knocked on the table to stress certain syllables, so that everything he said seemed iambic or dactylic, like someone whose ear is tuned to poetry or music.
Their verdict on Hirsi Ali’s younger sister, Haweya, was more complex. Haweya followed Hirsi Ali to the Netherlands, but failed to adapt in the way her sister had. She was unmotivated, seemingly depressed, then began hearing voices. For a while after returning to live with her mother in Nairobi, she seemed better, but the mental illness returned and she died following a psychotic episode and miscarriage. There are gaps in the narrative that leave the reader wondering how much the family concealed.
Earl blamed Haweya’s mental illness on the genital mutilation. “She was held down and mutilated and after that, clinical depression set in,” he said. His tone implied, wouldn’t anyone go crazy after such a horrible event? I admired his empathy for how awful that would be for a woman.
We all volunteered other theories. Byrne said Haweya felt like an outcast after having two abortions and Phoebe pointed to the passage about Haweya’s feelings of guilt surrounding those episodes. I suggested it might be a chemical imbalance. Dallas and Raymond said it sounded like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. Haweya’s risky sexual activity would fit with a diagnosis of bipolar, according to Tom. Whatever the reason, it was Doc who observed that circumstances had resulted in role reversals for the two sisters. Hirsi Ali had been a devout Muslim as a teenager but then broke away from the religion when she was older. Haweya, who had been more rebellious as a teenager, couldn’t make the dramatic leap that Hirsi Ali had, and instead returned to her faith, or some new version of it, influenced by psychotic episodes.
For Raymond, Hirsi Ali’s failure to help her sister consistently through her mental illness struck him as “huge selfishness.” “This was symptomatic of a much bigger problem with the book, even though it was provocative and valuable as a read,” he said. “You barely pierced the surface of the emotional depth of this woman.” He couldn’t believe that such an intelligent woman failed to see that her sister was in jeopardy, or to plumb her own “trauma” over breaking away from a faith that had governed her entire life for years. “I really don’t know if this woman knows how to love,” he said. “I think she’s devoid of a huge number of feelings.”
The men were horrified by some of the details of genital mutilation, which Hirsi Ali tells us is a practice that predated the Muslim faith, but is performed on almost every Somali girl in the name of Islam. In describing her own ghastly mutilation at age five, she gives us the image of an itinerant circumciser tweaking her clitoris, then cutting it off, along with her inner labia—like a butcher cutting through meat. He then pushed a sewing needle through the outer labia to stitch up the area into a virtual chastity belt of scarred flesh, leaving openings for urine and menstrual flow. The circumciser worked on Mahad and Haweya too.
“I did not know that they sewed them up,” exclaimed Tom.
Phoebe was unafraid of speaking candidly about the procedure. “The point is to get rid of sexual desire,” she said. “But it doesn’t take away that desire.” And Hirsi Ali claims that it doesn’t eradicate sexual pleasure, either, though she describes how much pain accompanied any remaining pleasure. The mention of desire prompted Earl and Frank to remind the others of how amusingly male desire featured in the book and how Hirsi Ali was taught that if she uncovered any skin she would be so “beguiling” it would cause traffic chaos.
As for the parents, we discussed the much-talked-about estrangement between Hirsi Ali and her father after she skipped out on her arranged marriage by claiming asylum in the Netherlands. Phoebe asked why the father’s reaction had been more violent to her foiled marriage arrangement than to her rejection of Islam. “The marriage was a business transaction for the father,” Frank said. “He was now in debt to the man she ran away from.” The father’s honour had been tainted. Frank’s close reading always produced insights for the rest of us.
Finally we tackled some of the more controversial questions. On the issue of her ability to break free, Bookman argued that it wouldn’t have been possible if she had not at one time been extremely devout, searching within Islam to find answers to key questions. “It became an issue of why she couldn’t find those answers,” he said.
And Raymond, whose scholarship in the Jewish faith was deep, was again a helpful contributor. “The book is about the rejection of the dictates of the Koran. It’s not a rejection of the essence of the religion. And in her rejection of those dictates she makes a big point of its anti-American, anti-Semitic bias
.” He thought she was still a God-fearing woman, though she described herself as an atheist.
Frank agreed. “If you asked her today if she’s really an atheist, she would say no. She was just revolting against all the man-made rules. To tell you the truth, reading this, I almost question my Catholic upbringing.” He confessed he couldn’t see the point of repeating the same prayers and rituals over and over.
“There’s a great passage,” says Raymond. “And I can’t find it right now, where she specifically says she wants to be a woman of integrity, how she wants to adopt all the greatness that Islam represents in all of its multi-faceted nature but does not want to be constrained by the strictness.”
“It’s on page 281,” said Byrne. Pages rustled. He read it aloud, the passage about finding her own intrinsic moral compass and no longer relying on a holy book to tell her what was right or wrong, good or bad. The lines he read spoke to everything that I believed about goodness and kindness. And it shone through that day in the men, whose own judgments about members of Hirsi Ali’s family spoke to their own moral compasses, and their own innate awareness of right and wrong. As Graham said to me: “If your daughter or wife chooses to wear a burka and that’s part of her belief, I don’t have a problem with that, but if you’re forcing her to wear a burka, I do have a problem with that.” Contained in that response was a deep natural morality and an instinct to honour women’s rights.
With just fifteen minutes to go before our time was up, Phoebe posed a question that would get good traction in any book club: what role did the Western novels that Hirsi Ali read as a girl play in her later rebellion.
Tom didn’t think her early reading was important. He thought the Harlequin romance novels that Hirsi Ali and a friend had giggled about as girls were passing fantasies. But Raymond challenged that view, arguing that reading torrid romances fed her determination to marry for love, rather than to submit to an arranged marriage.